Why the Red Pill?
by OnlyFunOnFridays
Summary: And who exactly is The Woman in the Red Dress based on? From Cypher's first day in the real world, to a crew member's death. Pre-Neo.
1. Cypher

**The explanation for this: my dad has been on a sci-fi kick lately, and I've been forced to watch the 'classics'. The Matrix was one of the better ones.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own them. They're free (albeit fictional) characters.**

"This is Trinity-" Morpheus gestured to a pretty woman with cropped dark hair, diligently keeping lookout from the bow of the hovercraft, "Switch and Apoc-" another woman, with bleached, spiky hair and a Polynesian man, polishing a what looked like a pair of giant tasers, "Mouse-" a younger boy, wearing scratched sunglasses and a tattered hat, "Venus," a young blonde woman with much longer hair than the other two, "and Tank and Dozer," a pair of black men, both healthier looking and without ports, sitting in front of two screens displaying long strings of green code.

"Everyone, meet our newest friend," said Morpheus loudly, calling attention to himself and the bald, silent man next to him, "Cypher."

None of the crew members acknowledged him in the slightest way, all their eyes were trained on Morpheus. It stung a little, having people act as if you were insignificant. Not even caring that you'd just been dumped from the slime tank where you'd lived out your life, only to find that the real world was run by machines. Not caring that you were about to pee yourself from the stress. Why should they? They were too important for him.

"Mouse," he said suddenly, his focus switching from Cypher to the boy. "How's the agent program going?"

"Absolutely great," gushed Mouse, talking so fast Cypher thought his lips were going to fall off. "I've got the city, and the agents, who, by the way, were absolutely disgusting to have to study, but I'm having a little bit of a tough time thinking of a distraction."

"A prostitute, maybe?" the younger blonde woman suggested, biting her lip to keep from laughing.

"Not a bad idea, really," Mouse agreed. "Then after she's done, I could put her into a different kind of program for the men on board. You know, have a little personal encounter for them. Depriving ourselves from the human way cannot be good for us."

"Shut up, Mouse," said Apoc, looking up from the taser. "We don't need a digital whore taking up program space."

"I could put her in a zip file," he suggested, shooting nervous looks at the weapon in Apoc's hands.

"Hey, Morpheus," Trinity said quietly. She had migrated from the front window to behind Morpheus and Cypher. "He looks pretty beat. Maybe he should go to bed. Get some rest for tomorrow."

What was with the he? Was he not good enough to waste speech on?

"Follow me," she commanded gently. It took him a second to realize who she was speaking to.

He followed, seemingly struck dumb. She led him to a tiny, shabby room, containing only a cot and a small table. As she made to leave, he spoke his first word since stepping onto the Nebuchadnezzar.

"Thanks."

"Go to sleep. You'll need it tomorrow."

A sharp rapping at his door the next morning woke him up from a tortured dream about red pills, rabbit holes, and repenting. Without waiting for an answer, the girl who'd suggested the prostitute opened the door and waltzed in with a pen and tablet in hand. Venus was a good name for her, he thought. She was beautiful as anything. But hoping that she was going to pay attention to him was delusional. It wasn't as though anyone else had been.

She squatted against the wall by the door and tapped in a few commands on the tablet. Apparently, paper was no longer used in whatever the hell year it was.

"Hello, Cypher," she said without looking up. Without acknowledging his presence with her eyes. After tapping a few more things into her tablet, she asked, "Tank said I could have a minute before your training. Would you mind if I psychoanalyzed you?"

The question caught him by surprise. He had been expecting something more along the lines of, "We've discovered that you're not actually cut out for the real world. Would you mind if we dumped you back into your vat?"

"I guess," he answered. Not revealing any more feeling than needed.

"First question. Why did you take the red pill?" She finally looked up at him, big, pretty brown eyes flickering between his face and where her pen was poised above the tablet.

"Why did _you_ take the red pill?" As soon as the question was out of his mouth, he regretted it. Now he would test as paranoid.

"Easy," she smiled, not visibly put-out by his reply, but pen tapping away at the tablet none the less. "I was about seven, and red is my favorite color. The decision made itself. You?"

"I wanted a change. I had a boring-ass desk job. Morpheus was the most interesting person I'd met in a while, so I went with it," he explained, picking at the skin on his thumb.

When she asked the next question, she was completely focused on him, though still tapping the infernal tablet. "How do you feel?"

"Why do you care?" he asked, savagely ripping off a piece of skin.

"I'm trying to see if there is a specific personality trait that causes people to choose the red, the unknown," explained Venus. Her smile was starting to look plastered on.

"Any luck with that?" he asked, avoiding the psychoanalysis. Where the hell had a girl who left the matrix at seven learned psychiatry? Unless she was some kind of child prodigy.

"No," she sighed. Her tone then switched to thinly-masked annoyance. "Answer the question, please."

"I feel scared," he answered, chuckling at her anger. It was so easy to break her calm shell. "Scared as hell."

"Why are you scared?"

"Why are _you _scared?" he replied.

"Answer the goddamn question, Cypher," she said quietly, furiously tapping at her tablet. He would have paid millions to see what she was writing.

"I'm scared," he answered slowly, watching her struggle to remain emotionless, "Because I have no idea what's going on. No one has told me anything. It's like I don't matter, like I'm nobody again. Just another battery."

"Nice speaking to you." With a few final taps on her tablet, she got up and left. She slammed the door behind her. Cypher could hear her voice, both annoyed and accomplished, speaking to someone who'd been waiting outside.

"Nice speaking to _you_, sweetheart."

**Who'd you like the next chapter to be based around? Anyone on the Neb is a possibility.**


	2. Tank

**I made an executive decision and picked Tank. Because he's cool. And sorry this took so long, I kind of sort of forgot about it.  
**

"…paranoid, narcissistic, and borderline anti-social," fumed Venus. She was brandishing her tablet at Morpheus, who looked more or less unaffected by her raging. "The egghead's a crackpot! In my professional opinion, I think we should dump him over the side and leave him for the sentinels to find."

"You didn't injure him, did you?" Tank inquired over the top of the monitors. "He still needs to train. I knew I shouldn't have let you go all psycho on him before I got my time with the guy."

"He's fine," she answered, plopping down in the second operating chair. Tank pushed the hand that held her tablet away from one of the more important keypads. "Against my better judgment."

"You couldn't hurt him even if you wanted to," he laughed. "You never took any 'violent' programs."

"That can be fixed," she muttered darkly as Cypher's door opened. Tank winced as she slammed the chair under the table.

"You're Tank, am I right?" asked Cypher, sliding into the chair Venus had recently vacated.

"You are right," he agreed. "Go sit in one of those chair with the big metal plugs."

He complied. Tank had no idea about why Venus took such an intense dislike to him. Cypher seemed like a nice enough guy. He didn't talk much, but who said that was a bad thing? Maybe Venus was just annoyed that she didn't have a part in unplugging him.

"Dozer, would you mind plugging him in?" he called to his brother.

Dozer lumbered over from a foul-smelling bucket filled with a somewhat opaque liquid, and warned Cypher, "This might give you the willies."

Dozer connected the plug to his port. Cypher's eyes rolled back in his head, then closed, all while flickering nervously from Tank to Dozer to the code flashing on the monitors. Tank's eyes followed Cypher's, looking at the screens with an expert's eyes. He seemed to be adjusting well to the nothingness that surrounded him. That was good, because Tank had no intention of running anything other than the kung fu lesson until Morpheus was plugged in. He'd already caused one redpill to lapse into a coma when he provided too much input, too fast.

"When you're ready, Dozer." Tank swiveled briefly to make sure that Morpheus was plugged correctly, then returned his gaze to the monitor. Morpheus and Cypher spoke for a moment before Tank received the command to call up the dojo that had been sent to them by another ship's operator.

No one on the ship paid any attention to the one-sided battle playing out on the monitors. The only thing that could interest them was if Cypher suddenly sprouted a second head and bit Morpheus's balls off. They'd all seen this too many times to pay attention any more.

With one eye watching the screens, he reminisced about the other's training. Apoc, even without any training, had almost beat Morpheus through brute force; as did Switch. Mouse had been absolutely hopeless, and Venus, tiny as she was then, had simply stared down Morpheus and refused to fight. Trinity had fared about as well as Cypher was doing now.

"Ouch," he muttered emphatically. A swift chop from Morpheus had just cracked over Cypher's bald head.

"Bring up the loading area," Morpheus commanded. Tank's fingers blurred over the keyboard as he called up the blank area. This was Morpheus's thing, so he let his mind wander as the chief explained the Matrix. The system really was a wonder. It would be nice if the coding could be translated, but there was just too much input to crack down and make it understandable to new kids. The new display screens were nice though. He ran a finger over the closest screen, thinking about how to improve the image quality. Maybe on the next trip to Zion he'd get some image adapters.

"Switch to the Mouse's new program," ordered Morpheus once he'd finished explaining. Cypher must be taking it pretty effing well to have gone straight from having his world flipped to another program.

"We don't have a distraction yet," Tank pointed out after getting Mouse, who had been eavesdropping, to shut up. "The program will be virtually useless."

"I'll go in," grinned Venus. She too had been eavesdropping, her chin on Mouse's shoulder. The two were irrepressible.

Tank cracked a smile and relayed the message to Morpheus.

"Fine with me."

"You're good for entrance," said Tank, glancing over his shoulder at the blonde girl. "But no more analyzing, no shooting, no poisoning- actually, you know what? Don't go near the guy."

She smiled angelically at him before her eyes rolled back in her head. He chuckled and flipped a switch to change programs. Morpheus and Cypher stood on a virtual street, filled with people dressed in the same kind of depressing colors there were out in the real world. People rushed by without noticing either of them, occasionally forcing them out of the way.

Morpheus started to monologue, explaining the dangers the Matrix could present. Cypher paid little attention. He gazed around at what he thought was the world he had recently left. If the program was going to play out like the code suggested, that was a bad move.

Out of nowhere, Venus sauntered by, dressed flamboyantly in a vividly red, low-cut dress. Mouse made a strangled noise from somewhere behind Tank. He could practically hear Venus grit her teeth as she smiled at Cypher.

A loud, "Yes!" reverberated over her channel as an Agent pressed his gun to Cypher's head. Several more of the creeps had the two surrounded while she slipped away, not-so-silently celebrating.

"Damn, Mouse!" exclaimed Tank, "You know what you're doing!"

"I try," answered Mouse, perched by Venus like a concerned father. "Can you get her out now? I'm not sure what those Agents are going to do next."

"What do you mean, you don't know?" asked Apoc with a flash of white teeth. "To busy with the digital whore idea to finish it?"

"Why I oughta- I mean, of course not," he changed tactic after catching a glimpse of the giant gun nestled next to Apoc. "I just haven't had a chance to run the program and catch all the bugs, because, as you know, we haven't had much free time lately, what with the whole unplugging of Cypher."

"You got it," smiled Tank, still laughing at the expression on Cypher's face. "Morpheus, this is your operator. Buckle up, it going to be a bumpy ride. You're back in three… two… _one._"

**Woo! End of chapter two.**


End file.
